“Is there anything I should be doing, or not doing? Until I decide.” Kallista straightened her long dress tunic, dusted off the seat.
“As long as you are feeling well, there’s no reason for your activity to change. If you feel tired, rest. If you’re hungry, eat. If you do have some morning sickness, eat something bland. Tea and toast can work wonders.” Merinda twinkled. “And if all those men of yours get to hovering too much, send for me and I’ll sort them.”
Kallista’s laugh felt weak. Tell them? The world would end before she told. It would definitely end if she did. Torchay would wrap her up in cotton padding and put her in a box until the baby was born. The others—who knew how they would react? She scarcely knew them.
She gathered up the men and walked with them back to their rooms. Aisse had already returned to check on the celebration meal. Thank the One they did not have to face another state dinner tonight. Last night’s performance had been quite enough.
A baby
. She was going to have a baby. Her own child. Hers and—her ilian’s. It often happened that a woman didn’t know which of her iliasti sired her children until the infant was born and its bloodline read. Stone or Torchay—the child belonged to both of them. To all of them, even Obed, now that he was ilias.
She couldn’t give it up. Some women did because they were too old or too young or too ill, returning the life to the One before the child was born. But she couldn’t do it. She had tried to smother the longing, but hadn’t succeeded in killing it. She wanted this baby. But what did that mean for their task?
Kallista ate the meal Aisse had ordered, sitting between Obed and Stone. She thought she managed to behave normally. Torchay didn’t give her more than one of two piercing looks, so perhaps she did. She was too distracted to play well when Stone pulled out the queens-and-castles board, losing quickly and giving up the game.
Her magic would fade as her child grew inside her. She would need both magic and agility to carry out this assignment of theirs. She had seen the demon again in her dreams. At least she thought it was the demon.
Something malevolent seemed to haunt the dreamscape when she skittered through it on the few occasions when her nights weren’t filled with dreams of erotic sensuality. She’d seen Tibran Rulers and Warrior chiefs, seen smoke-colored shadow hovering in the rooms where they met and plotted. It kept her from hearing their plots, obscured her view of their plans. She could not stop the invasion of Adara from this distance. She had to go to Tibre, meet the demon-ridden king face-to-face and set him free. But when?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
K
allista watched Stone and Torchay at their queens-and-castles game, Aisse in the open space beyond working through the Fan Dai exercises Torchay had taught her. Because she could move farther than Stone’s and Obed’s magical chains allowed, she often did. Kallista sometimes wondered if she did it to taunt the Tibran male, but as long as there was no open hostility, she let it slide.
Tired beyond words, she retreated to her room and stretched out on her bed. One by one, her muscles began to relax, and as her body eased, her mind began to clear.
They couldn’t wait until after this child was born to sail for Tibre. Adara’s danger was too great. The reports coming in from the northern coast told of towns and villages burned, people slaughtered. No cities had yet fallen, but it was only a matter of time. Ukiny would have fallen already if not for the dark magic she’d called.
They had to accomplish what was given them to do before her magic left her, whenever that might be, before her pregnancy slowed her down. Before it began to show. Because if Torchay knew she was pregnant, he would never allow them to go anywhere, not until the baby was born. Therefore, he couldn’t know. And if she couldn’t tell Torchay, she couldn’t tell anyone.
The sun was barely over the palace walls when Kallista woke to odd sounds and came stumbling from her bedroom to see workers piling crates and trunks and bales of goods in the center of the parlor. Torchay watched them, feet planted wide apart, arms folded across his chest, a bemused expression on his face. Obed and Stone stood at the entrance to the room they now shared, and as Kallista moved farther into the parlor, pulling a dressing robe over her chemise, Aisse appeared across the way.
“What is this?” Kallista stopped next to Torchay to tie the sash of her robe.
“I believe someone has decided to deliver our new ilias’s luggage.” Torchay slanted an eye toward the other men.
Obed approached, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He wore only those long, loose white trousers of his, exposing all of his tattoos. Kallista couldn’t help staring.
“Did you order this?” She jerked her gaze from Obed back to the rising piles on the once-empty floor.
He shook his head. “I told them to wait for instructions. I suppose they got tired of waiting.”
“What
is
all of this?” Kallista had never seen so much…stuff all in one place.
“It is yours.” Obed stepped forward and threw open a hinged crate, revealing racked swords with the distinctive black scabbards of the Heldring forge. The best swords in existence, birthed of folded steel and blue-hot North magic, taking a year or more to complete each one—and the crate held ten of them.
“Khralsh—” Stone breathed the word. He moved toward the swords as if drawn by chains and reached into the crate.
“Not that one.” Kallista spoke before she realized she had.
Stone jerked his hand back, stepped away, eyeing Torchay as if he feared punishment. Kallista paid little attention. He would learn. These swords had magic hammered into every folded layer of steel. The sword must be carefully matched to its bearer before that person touched it. A poor match could be disastrous.
She wrapped a length of silk spilled from one of the bundles around her hand—she didn’t want to go back for her gloves—and studied the swords in the crate. Kallista didn’t have to call magic. She knew Stone. He echoed through her now, without need for a touch.
“This one.” Kallista picked the sword up by the scabbard, the black surface chased with an ornate red geometric design, both hands wrapped in the blue silk. “You should have this one.”
Kallista turned, held the sword out hilt first to Stone. He stared at it, hunger in his eyes, then looked up at her. “Me?”
She could sense his confusion through that echo inside her. “You have already fought for me, with me. You’re not Tibran anymore, Stone. You’re ilias.”
With a swift glance back at Torchay, Stone stretched out his hand and grasped the hilt of the sword. Kallista felt no magic stirring, but Stone smiled. He drew the sword from its scabbard and tested the balance, moving away from the others to make a few experimental swings. It was double-edged, straight and long, a mountain sword, suited for thrusting as well as cutting.
Kallista turned back to the rough crate. There. That sword was meant for Obed. A sabre, slightly curved, edged only along the outer curve with a black-on-black scabbard. And there—twin short swords in a double sheath chased with twining green coils—they belonged to Torchay. There was a sword for Kallista, its scabbard slashed with jagged blue streaks, and one for Aisse, subtly striped with bronze, smaller than the others to suit her smaller build, but equally fine.
“How did you know?” Kallista gave Obed his sword.
He drew it without taking his eyes from her. “You are sword master as well?”
“How did you know which swords to bring?” She offered Torchay the blades made for him. He drew them both in a smooth cross-hand motion.
“I did not. I bought all they were willing to sell me, hoping you might find use for them.” Obed slid his sabre back into its sheath. As close as he stood to her, she could feel his desire for her mixed with awe and a sense of…worship? Why?
She stepped away from him to give Aisse her sword, then took up the one that called to her, finally shedding the silk coverings on her hands. Kallista drew it from the scabbard, a rapier, narrow and sharp, lightweight, perfect for the training Torchay had given her. It felt good in her hand, secure, confident. Was it her own confidence, or the sword’s?
“There are four left,” Torchay said. “Does that mean we wait for four marked companions—four more iliasti yet to come?”
Four
more?
She couldn’t deal with the four she had now. “You heard Obed. He bought as many as they would sell him.”
“But there was a blade to match each of us. Folk are turned away from Heldring every day because no sword will match them.”
“And it took ten blades to find one—or two—to match each of us.” She didn’t have time to wait for any more iliasti to turn up. They had to move quickly. It was time to tell them.
Kallista took breath to call her ilian together and choked on it. At the opposite end of the long parlor, Stone parried a thrust, fighting invisible enemies with his new sword. Far beyond the ten paces he had been confined to for so long.
“Stone.” She returned her blade to its home, backing a few steps farther.
He whipped the sword in an intricate pattern, spinning to a halt facing her. His eyes widened as he saw the distance between them. “I am—”
“Still upright, yes.” Kallista took another step back, and another, until she bumped against the wall.
Obed collapsed, but Torchay caught him before he hit the floor. Kallista took several quick steps forward until the dark man began to recover.
So Stone backed away. Was it real? Had he been released from his magical confinement? He had counted on the dizziness that hit just before he passed the boundary to tell him when he’d moved too far from Kallista, as he had these last weeks. But there had been no dizziness.
Again, he measured the distance between them. At least twice what he’d been allowed before. He laughed out loud in sheer joy. Could he go farther? Did he still have limits? Stone opened the door to the suite and stepped outside.
Nothing. Not even dizziness. He moved farther, past the guards’ quarters to the top of the stairs. Still nothing. He headed down the stairs. Lieutenant Suteny followed, but Stone paid him no attention. Joh followed everywhere he went.
Stone picked up speed as he descended, clattering faster and faster down the stairs until he was taking them two at a time. People scattered when he burst into the wide gallery at the end of the stairwell. Stone laughed again, spreading his arms wide and spinning in a circle.
He was free
.
He could go anywhere he wanted. Do anything he pleased. And he wouldn’t fall down in a faint. He grinned at the courtiers eyeing him warily and swept into a low bow. And Kallista’s touch shimmered through him.
Even here, as far from her as he stood, they were linked. She touched things inside him never meant to be touched, spearing him through with delight. Could he go far enough away to escape that? Did he want to? And if he did, where could he go? What place out there was better than where he was?
“Warrior. Stone.” Joh was talking to him.
“What?” Stone couldn’t prevent the irritation in his voice. He shouldn’t want to go back to Kallista. He didn’t want to want it. And again, her touch stroked sweetly along his soul.
“Put away the blade, warrior.” The steel in Joh’s voice brought Stone back to his surroundings.
The lieutenant and his guards encircled Stone, separating him from the few frightened-looking courtiers who still lingered in the gallery, and he suddenly realized how this looked. A wild-eyed Tibran dashing through the Adaran palace with a naked sword in his hand, laughing like a madman—it would alarm anyone.
Stone rotated the sword’s hilt in his hand, preparing to hand it over, and the sword…protested? Accepting it as yet one more magical improbability to deal with, Stone considered his alternatives. He’d left the scabbard above in the parlor, so he couldn’t put it away. “Move out of my way so I can go home.”
He started for the stairwell as if he expected the guards to move out of his way, and they did.
Home
, he’d said. Was it? Not the suite. But the people inside were as close as he was likely to get, now Fox was gone. He belonged with them. It would never be like it was with Fox. He didn’t want it to be. But they were all he had. He would be stupid to throw them away.
Halfway up the stairs, Stone paused and looked over his shoulder at the guards herding him back. Torchay wasn’t among them. Nor was he waiting at the top of the stairs. Then again, Stone had been running, sword in hand,
away
from Torchay’s charge. The bodyguard probably hoped Stone wouldn’t return. Despite the fight with the prinsipella and her gang of rowdies, Stone knew Torchay still didn’t quite trust him.
But they were all of them sitting around breakfast, listening to Kallista as they ate. She looked up and smiled. “I’m glad to see you return on your own feet. Did you find the limit?”
Stone picked up the red-chased scabbard and slid his new sword inside. “I’m not sure there is one.” Her smile made him feel strange and he didn’t like it. She was just a woman, despite her magic. “Why didn’t you come after me?”
“Should I have?” She watched him approach. They all did, but her eyes touched him. “Would you have felt as free?”
The truth hit him and he would have staggered save for his grip on the chair. She had known every step he took. He pulled it out and sat, watching her as she did him. The others might have been shadows for all the attention he gave them. “But I’m
not
free, am I?”
“No more than I.” She held his gaze, her eyes as blue and bright as the lightning she threw. “You at least are bound only to me. I’m bound twice over.”
He didn’t want to think about that. His own troubles were burden enough. He wanted to blame her for them, and didn’t like feeling it might not be fair to do so.
“I’ll give you all the freedom I can.” She handed him a plate filled with sausages and sweet buns, all the things he particularly liked. “You returned just in time. I was about to tell everyone what I believe the One has destined for us.”